Saturday, October 26, 2013

Puerto Rico and the Legacy of Las Casas

I’ve been in San Juan, Puerto Rico since Thursday afternoon, soaking up
the sun and returning to my academic roots after a long hiatus.A highlight today was ensconcing myself this morning
at a restaurant table with a seaside view to enjoy breakfast.Why am I in Puerto Rico?I organized two conference panels on the
Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, a “Protector of the Indians,” for the
annual Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, and contributed a paper on my use of Las
Casas’s writings in a comparative genocide course I teach at the University of
Minnesota.Fittingly, Puerto Rico is the
location of this year’s conference.Las
Casas spent over a decade in the Caribbean, including a brief stay in San Juan in
1521.Years later when he penned his Brevísima Relación de la Destrución de las
Indias he would not mince words about what happened on this island paradise.The Spaniards committed atrocities against
the hapless natives, laying them on “gridirons made of twigs and tree branches
to roast them and setting loose savage dogs, and afterward oppressing and
torturing and ill-treating them in the mines and other labors, until they had
consumed and worn away all those poor innocents and slain them.”The Dominican’s moral courage and dogged
determination to protect the Amerindian population from the ravages of his
fellow Spaniards have preoccupied me these past couple of days, as scholars have
gathered here from different disciplines to discuss his legacy.

Above all, though Las Casas was a flawed human being, rather cantankerous
and combative, and though for a time he supported the African slave trade only
to repent from this hypocritical stance years later with a contrite heart, what amazes me
was the ability of this individual to stand up against the imperial system,
indeed the zeitgeist, and, like an Old Testament prophet, condemn crimes against
humanity committed by his own people, even as he appeals to the
conscience of his contemporaries, including no less than Charles V, the Holy Roman
Emperor and King of Spain, who eventually supported new laws to curb abuses in the
New World.Las Casas was a voice crying in the wilderness, but he was not alone.Little did parishioners realize when Dominican preacher Antonio Montesinos
entered the pulpit one Sunday morning in Santo Domingo what was in store for
them. “There is a sterility of conscience among you on this island [Hispaniola],” he boldly declared,
“and a blindness in which you live.”He
went on with a series of questions that seems to echo in eternity, or at least
into our present day: “Are these not men?Do they not have rational souls?Are you not obligated to love them as yourselves!Don’t you understand this?Don’t you see this?How can you be in such a profound and lethargic
sleep?”Such sermons made an impression
on Las Casas, who had a profound conversion experience, giving up his life as a
slaveholder and entering the Dominican order, much as an English sailor named John
Newton, two centuries later, would condemn the “evil institution” that he had
benefited from and go on to become an ardent abolitionist and pen “Amazing
Grace.”

I didn’t come here just to talk about Las Casas, however.I’ve enjoyed this brief time in Puerto Rico,
and, honestly, I’ve attended only the conference panels I organized so as to
have plenty of time to roam the shoreline, walk the streets of downtown San
Juan, and take photos of some historic sites.I did show up at a reception
in the lobby last night, however, so I could get three or four free glasses of wine.(Not long thereafter I met some people from
the conference when I sat down to play an abandoned grand piano, mildly tipsy, though I had
no interest in networking with scholars this weekend.)It’s a bit humid for my tastes here, but it’s
spectacularly beautiful.My
participation in this conference isn’t merely an excuse to visit Puerto Rico;
after all, it comes at a busy time of the year and it's difficult to set aside the weight of the world while I'm here.I haven’t attended one of these
conferences since 2004.Many things have
happened since then, including military service and overseas deployment.This conference is an effort to reconnect
with my 16th century roots, so to speak, after years and years of teaching other topics and abandoning research.In a way, I’m an academic in my heart of
heart; I can walk the walk and talk the talk, and for the most part I enjoy
this life.Yet I realize that I'll never
be a normal academic, given other life experiences and, well, some
self-confessed oddities.Nonetheless, I’m
somewhat in the game now, as scholars want to put something together next year
and asked if I’d be interested in publishing papers in these panels and help make
the Dominican’s life work more accessible to the public.2014 marks the quincentenary of Las Casas's conversion, when he
relinquished his land grant of slaves—no better sign of an internal change
of heart. I’m not sure if I’ll be a part
of this project, as I’m no Lascasista.In fact, I’m quite outside my linguistic ken in taking on a subject such
as this.Two things I can affirm, though:
(1) Las Casas is a Mensch, even a hero of
mine, well worth consideration and (2) this trip to San Jose, however short, has been a welcome respite from the rigors of this semester.